Sitting several rows off the court at Continental Airlines Arena yesterday afternoon, just hours before he was beaten out for the Heisman in a landslide by USC tailback Reggie Bush, Young was watching the Texas basketball team, ranked second, play No.1 Duke.

The Longhorns, who lost 97-66, weren’t given much of a chance, just as Young’s No.2-ranked Texas football team is a touchdown underdog against No.1-ranked USC in the national championship Rose Bowl.

Young was reminded that 35 years ago in this town, an underdog team named the Jets – “Joe Namath, yeah,” Young cut in – upset the favored Baltimore Colts in the Super Bowl.

Young was asked if he was ready to step into Namath’s shoes and guarantee a win.

“Right now, yeah, I’m very confident about it,” he said. “They [the Trojans] come in the game off a high winning streak, and everybody’s blowing them up, you know, and they think we’re the underdogs and we’re not going to come to play. I know that we are. We’re going to come to show them the Texas football team.”

The Texas football team (12-0) has been a machine this year, and Young has been the engineer – passing for 2,769 yards and 26 touchdowns and rushing for 850 yards and nine touchdowns.

The junior already is Texas’ career total offense leader, and he’s one of just six Division I-A players to rush and pass for more than 200 yards in a game. In any other year, Broadway Young would raise the little bronze trophy.

But this is the Trojan Empire, and all hail Bush and quarterback Matt Leinart, who won the Heisman last season and was the only other player invited to New York.

“Everybody likes Reggie and everybody likes USC because they’ve been winning for so long,” acknowledged Young. “Us at the University of Texas just want to go show the world how good a team that we are.”

Young lost and he seemed truly disheartened.

“Right now I feel I let my guys down, my family down, the whole city of Houston down,” said at a news conference at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Young looked like a man with a score to settle. Leinart was asked if he thought losing the Heisman to Bush would make the Texas quarterback more motivated to win the national championship.

“Maybe he will,” said Leinart. “I’m not Vince Young. I don’t know what motivates him.”